Creating A Business Grounded In Values with Tack Butter’s Rochelle Woodeshick

When you talk to Tack Butter’s founder Rochelle Woodeshick, it is clear that she created a business steeped in values. She developed a natural leather cleaner and conditioner with lavender for her mare who is very sensitive to smells. “She doesn’t like normal conditioner and cleaners so when I would clean tack, she’d run up to me, smell it and run away,” explained Rochelle. “With this, as it’s smells like lavender, she is sort of tricked into not believing it’s a leather conditioner and cleaner. She likes it.”

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She carries important values from helping with her parents’ pizza business with her: never sacrifice on quality ingredients and make your product the best. So she went to Emma Ford, professional Olympic groom and author of World Class Grooming for Horses, to put the product to the test and improve it. “I went to Emma Ford because I knew she was the best in the business,” said Rochelle. “If I was going to put my name on a product, it had to really work. It had to be different and unique.”

And the importance and personal significance of Rochelle’s budding business runs even deeper.

With every purchase of Tack Butter, a donation is given to Lee Lee Jones, Olympic event rider Phillip Dutton’s stepdaughter who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a riding accident in 2016. As an equestrian mom herself, Rochelle was touched and wanted to do something to help Lee Lee. “She has an ongoing recovery and I wanted to give back to her. I give a donation to her with every sale, wholesale or retail,” she said. “It makes me emotional, my daughter rides and events. It touched me and I had to do something. It could happen to anybody.”